On Septmeber 25, 2012 Benjamin and Shannon locked themselves to Keystone XL construction machinery outside Winnsboro, Texas and delayed pipeline construction for most of the day. Police began using aggressive pain compliance tactics when a …

Originally posted on Huffington Post Green On Earth Day, April 22, 2013, I disrupted construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline (KXL Pipeline) and was arrested and charged with several offenses in Atoka County, Oklahoma. 18 …

On October 13th Sunoco Logistics’ Mid-Valley pipeline leaked at least 4,000 barrels of crude oil into Tete Bayou, a tributary that feeds Caddo Lake. For the last two weeks Sunoco has maintained that no oil …

Originally published in Free Press Houston on September 22, 2014. By Perry Graham. Yesterday, over 300,000 people gathered in New York City for the People’s Climate March. Organizers for the march billed it as …

This piece was written by a Boston-based group of 13 young people who were arrested in #FloodWallStreet. The Tar Sands Blockade collective did not write this piece, but we believe this is an important conversation. …

by Liana Lopez from t.e.j.a.s. (Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services). Reposted from YES! Magazine. The fifth and final Tar Sands Healing Walk took place on June 28 in Fort McMurray, Canada. Hundreds of people joined …

Houston, TX – Downtown Houston was total mayhem this afternoon* at the U.S. headquarters of Canada-based pipeline giant Enbridge. When this reporter arrived, the scene was highly congested; nearly a hundred Houstonians protesting the “KXXXL Pipeline” were surrounded by an almost equal number of HPD officers on foot, horseback, bicycle, and Segway™. Just outside the lobby doors, CEO of Enbridge Energy Management Mark Maki was animatedly interviewing with at least four local TV News affiliates. When he finished the interview, I asked Maki to explain what was happening.

According to Maki, a member of Enbridge’s Board of Directors, ever since TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline became a household name, the engineers and executives at the competing Enbridge Corporation have been feeling left out. “Every time I turn on the TV, I see [TransCanada CEO] Russ Girling on CNN, on MSNBC, on Fox News!” he said, “Enbridge operates the longest petroleum pipeline system in the world, and KXL gets all the attention! It’s a downright injustice.”

In October, Enbridge will activate a tar sands pipeline system to bring 880,000 barrels/day of tar sands bitumen from Alberta to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. The system, which includes the re-purposed Alberta Clipper pipeline, the newly constructed Flanagan South, the repurposed Seaway Pipeline, and the new Seaway Loop, follows a similar route as KXL and will carry more product.

At first, Maki explained, he and the other Enbridge executives didn’t understand why national environmental groups were paying so little attention. “We kept hearing about KXL being the ‘fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet’ and getting all the hype, and here we are, building a bigger fuse and doing it faster, and I can’t even get airtime on Sean Hannity!”

All that changed this week, with Enbridge’s announcement that it will re-brand its piecemeal system as one super-pipeline called “KXXXL.” As news of the name change disseminated, local Houstonians became enraged by the prospect of KXXXL and have taken to the streets.

Photo by Elizabeth Brossa

When I asked Mark Maki if he had any response to the protesters’ claims that KXXXL will poison Gulf Coast refinery communities and destabilize the global climate, he quickly ended the interview, apologizing that he had to go prepare for an appearance on Anderson Cooper 360.

Meanwhile, a protester with a megaphone urged the crowd to resist Enbridge’s media showboating. “Enbridge can call its river of poison whatever it wants, our message remains the same,” she said. “We are facing a global ecological crisis, and we need a solution that addresses the roots of the crisis. Gulf Coast communities are already living in industrial sacrifice zones, so although we will continue to fight new toxic infrastructure like K triple-X L, the root of the problem goes deeper. We need to change the system that allows sacrifice zones to exist in the first place.”

The crowd responded with a resounding cheer and a sea of twinkle fingers. I approached a group holding a banner reading “NOOO KXXXL” and asked why they were protesting. “We’re here today,” one of them responded, “to affirm that the tar sands flowing through Enbridge’s pipelines are just as criminal as those flowing through KXL. The same can be said for the thousands of bomb trains transporting tar sands by rail! Or the expansion of dangerous dirty energy infrastructure in every port city along the Gulf Coast – Freeport, Houston, Port Arthur, New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola – where we already face a vast crisis of environmental racism!”

The crowd dispersed shortly after five, after most Enbridge employees had left the office. Rush hour was in full swing. Though the protesters followed regulations and kept to the sidewalk, HPD had brought a large enough force to cause extreme congestion, including an incident at the intersection of Lamar and Louisiana. Police Chief Charles McClelland later said “[The officer] piloting the Segway™ briefly lost control of his vehicle. Neither he, nor the officer on horseback, nor the horse, nor the civilian, sustained anything but minor injuries.”

Line 6b (active construction) is the pipeline that spilled in Kalamazoo in 2010 and is currently being expanded to double its capacity for tar sands oil transportation. Enbridge hopes to have this new line up by 2014 and construction has already begun in parts of Michigan. This line runs through the southern part of Michigan and will connect to lines in Canada and the east coast for oil export. See Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands (MI-CATS) for more information and ways to help out.

Lakehead Line 5 (operational) is a 53-year old re-purposed pipeline, currently pumping over 540,000 barrels per day of tar sands bitumen underneath the Straits of Mackinac in The Great Lakes. The Coast Guard says they could not adequately respond to such a spill.

Line 9 (partially operational) Enbridge is also planning to re-purpose and increase pressure on the 500 mile, 38 yr old natural gas “Line 9” to carry tar sands through the territory of dozens of indigenous nations, through Great Lakes ecosystems and near major cities like Montreal and Toronto. Part of the line has already been re-purposed for tar sands; the remaining section was given regulatory approval in March, 2014 but is not operational. For more information, follow Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia Against Pipelines (ASAP) on Twitter and Facebook.

* Not really, though nearly 100 Houstonians did march through downtown Houston, stopping to call out some of the worst perpetrators of climate injustice: Enbridge, LyondellBasell, Kinder Morgan, Shell, Anadarko, and the U.S. Military. No horses or cops on scooters or anyone else were harmed during the making of this satire – not even this oil-rich Marie Antoinette who showed up to rep the 1%.

Exxon’s Pegasus Pipeline restartedjust three weeks ago. The same 60+ yr-old pipeline which devastated Mayflower, Arkansas last April is now actively pumping through the towns, forests and wetlands of East Texas.

Tar Sands Blockade traveled to Mayflower after the spill to meet people directly affected by the tar sands industry and hear their stories. Many of the people we met in Mayflower have never stopped raising a fuss about how Exxon wrecked their land and water and poisoned their families. Though this short documentary is only able to chronicle a small handful of their stories, we hope that it will serve as a stark warning about the dangers of extreme energy infrastructure.

Thursday morning, two community members from the organization Blackland Prairie Rising Tide locked themselves to stair banisters inside of the Hilton Anatole hotel at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual national convention in Dallas, Texas. Subsequently, two more protesters dropped a banner from a banister in the hotel lobby reading “We Suffer, ALEC Profits.”

Beginning on Wednesday, thousands of business executives as well as local, state and national politicians attended the annual convention, which will last until Saturday morning. The members of Blackland Prairie Rising Tide are airing a multitude of grievances that relate to ALEC’s secretive practices, which include ‘wining-and-dining’ politicians in order to promote legislation written by corporations.

ALEC has written legislation that aims to privatize public services such as prisons, toll roads, and education. Many of the organization’s bills are written as ‘model bills’ that are meant to be replicated around the nation. Recently, the group introduced the controversial ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws in several states. The laws were brought to public attention by the shooter George Zimmerman in the infamous Trayvon Martin case.

Locally in Dallas, billionaire investors are using ALEC legislation to privatize the independent school district and transform it into a for-profit institution. This legislation works by promoting voucher programs that drain public schools of resources by using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private school profits and specifying that those schools must remain unregulated. In addition the bill works to deem public schools “educationally bankrupt” to rationalize giving taxpayer dollars unregulated schools.

Cien Fuegos Carmona, a local anti-police brutality community organizer, locked himself inside of the hotel citing concerns of wealth disparity and oppressive governments that lead him to protest today. “Poor folks are always doing the work and the rich are always exploiting and looting our collective dreams,” said Carmona.

ALEC continues to subvert our democracy from behind closed doors, launching a series of corporate-funded attacks on the overall quality of life for the general public without input of those affected for the last
four decades,” said Whytney Blythe, a local community activist and organizer who also locked herself inside of the hotel. “Some of the bills ALEC has sponsored includes: the racist Arizona SB 1070, the controversial Stand Your Ground Law and the Minimum Mandatory Sentencing Act, exacerbating the failed ‘War on Drugs’ and boosting the ever-growing prison population all in the name of profit. They actively fight against an established living wage for workers while simultaneously minimizing worker’s rights and manipulating national and state legislatures to
inhibit a wide array of efforts to protect the environment as well as public health. The grave danger ALEC poses to our collective wellbeing is severe and we refuse to remain casualties in the name of greed any
longer.”

The organization is now seeking donations for costs and plans to uphold a sustained local campaign in relation to local environmental concerns and free trade agreements.

Permanent link to this article: https://tarsandsblockade.org/alecdallas/